On Tuesday night, guitarist Tom Morello performed alone at The Parish of the House of Blues. When he returns in October, he's bringing friends.

Morello and Rage Against the Machine are slated to headline the ninth Voodoo Music Experience in City Park. The festival, expanded to three days, opens on Friday, Oct. 26, and wraps Sunday, Oct. 28, 2007.

"I'm extremely proud of the lineup," said Steve Rehage, whose New Orleans/New York company, Rehage Entertainment, produces Voodoo. "Hopefully we've got a lineup that demands national attention and makes people think, 'Wow, cool things still happen in New Orleans. Let's go.' "

After nine seasons, the Voodoo Music Experience is the major music event on New Orleans' fall calendar. Voodoo generated much good will when it became the first festival to return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Two months after the storm, Rehage and his team staged a scaled-down Voodoo Fest in Riverview Park along the Mississippi River. Headliners Nine Inch Nails and the New York Dolls donated their services; tickets were given away.

In 2006, Voodoo returned to a new City Park site surrounding the New Orleans Museum of Art. The festival will use that site along Lelong Avenue again this year.

The surprising success of the 2006 festival -- an estimated 90,000 fans turned out over two days headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Duran Duran -- emboldened organizers to expand to three days. The only previous three-day Voodoo, in 2003, drew small crowds on its opening Friday, which fell on Halloween.

"There are a lot of reasons that don't relate to music about why we expanded this year and didn't contract," Rehage said. "For me personally, it's a bold statement. We're not taking a step back -- we're going to add a day. We're going to make you think about New Orleans. About buying a plane ticket and getting a hotel room and coming down here and having dinner and seeing for yourself what's happening."

Voodoo plans to emphasize its local pedigree with a new performance area, dubbed "Le Carnival," meant to conjure the bohemian spirit of Frenchmen Street.

"(The perception of) Voodoo has gone from a Lollapalooza-type event that just happened to be in New Orleans to 'this really is a New Orleans festival,' " Rehage said. "The festival's uniqueness is New Orleans music."

Still, Rehage said, sometimes "it's hard to make Dr. John and Kermit Ruffins pop out when you're looking at Rage Against the Machine."

Rage Against the Machine is Voodoo's marquee act. The Los Angeles quartet dispenses a potent brand of hard rock infused with rap and left-leaning politics. After three successful studio albums in the 1990s, vocalist Zack De La Rocha quit in 2000.

In the ensuing years, Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk formed Audioslave with former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell. De La Rocha collaborated with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor on a solo album that never materialized.

Audioslave released two albums, then disbanded this spring, paving the way for a Rage Against the Machine reunion. The band's appearance at southern California's Coachella festival in April was initially thought to be a one-off reunion. But Rage subsequently confirmed a half-dozen additional dates.

After his solo show Tuesday at The Parish, Morello declined to comment on the band's upcoming Voodoo appearance. He grants interviews as The Nightwatchman, his acoustic protest singer alter ego, but said he and his Rage Against the Machine bandmates have agreed not to discuss Rage matters in the press.

Tuesday's show was Morello's second post-Katrina visit to New Orleans. Onstage, he spoke extensively about the city's trials and the necessity of individual citizens taking matters into their own hands.

Rehage was in the audience.

"Rage Against the Machine speaks to a generation," he said. "You're looking at a band that has its place in history. It's huge that they have chosen to play New Orleans. We couldn't ask for a better spokesperson right now."

Morello wrote the song "Midnight in the City of Destruction" about post-Katrina New Orleans. Onstage, he and De La Rocha speak with the passion of revolutionaries.

"I think it means a lot to them, in the way that it meant a lot last year to Anthony Kiedis and Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), to plant their flag here and say, 'We're going down to New Orleans, and we're playing,'¤" Rehage said.

"I can't speak for them, but I think they're doing it for the right reasons. They're coming to New Orleans with a purpose. And they've never been a band to hold their tongues onstage, so I would expect a lively show with a few surprises."

Rage Against the Machine isn't the only reborn ¤'90s band on tap for Voodoo. Singer/guitarist Billy Corgan re-formed the Smashing Pumpkins with drummer Jimmy Chamberlain this year and issued a new album.

And the Black Crowes likely hope they fare better at this Voodoo than in 2001. Delays with Snoop Dogg's set on the same stage meant the Black Crowes started more than an hour late and played to a diminishing audience. Weeks after Voodoo, the Crowes disbanded.

Voodoo won't announce its daily schedule until September. A limited number of three-day passes, which grant in-out privileges to the festival grounds, go on sale June 29 at 9 a.m. for $100 plus applicable service charges.

On July 20, three-day "Loa Lounge" VIP packages go on sale for $450; they include grandstand seating, preferred parking, food and beverage, and other amenities. Single-day tickets are not available.